“MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING”
A Comedy by
William Shakespeare

• Director: Barbara Ridenour
• Assistant director: Jen Goheen
• When: 7 p.m. Thursday, April 3
  7:30 p.m. Friday, April 4
  7:30 p.m. Saturday, April 5
• Where: North Attic Playhouse

Note: Throughout this week the Gargoyle will present a series of diary entries by five members of this year’s spring play, Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” The opening performance will be 7 p.m. Thursday at the North Attic Playhouse, followed by 7:30 p.m. shows Friday and Saturday. For the first installment of our series (by Michelle Gao), click here.

AS I SHUFFLED into school Monday morning after that impossibly long walk from the parking lot, I found myself confused. Why on earth was I so totally exhausted when I and the rest of the cast and crew of “Much Ado About Nothing” hadn't even started rehearsing from 5 to 10 p.m. yet?

Ridiculous, I told myself. Stop being ridiculous and wake up. But no matter how much I told myself that, it didn't seem to work because before I knew it, I was sitting in U.S. history, fighting all my intuitions and wants and needs and hopes and dreams to keep my eyes open while we learned about bombs and stuff.

Somehow, I made it through the day without falling asleep for more than a couple minutes, and when the bell rang at the end of my eighth-hour poetry class, it was finally time for tech week to really begin.

I joined up with juniors Hannah Leskosky and James Smith for dinner. After a slightly damp trek across the quad, we ended up at Za's, where I got some delicious pizza. After another fairly wet trip to Jimmy John's and a completely drenched walk to the Illini Union, we high-tailed it back through the flood to school, where we waited impatiently to be let inside.

By the time we were finally allowed in, there was a very large group of very wet, very unhappy actors and crew members who all crowded into the kitchen.

Eventually, we made it up in the uncomfortably crowded elevator to the South Attic, unloading the immense amount of stuff we all carry around with us. I was delighted to find that my mother had decided to be the coolest person ever and provide Panera bagels and cream cheese, pasta salad, carrots, cookies, and cookie dough brownies for our consumption, and that English teacher Steve Rayburn had been awesome enough to cart it all up to the South Attic.

It seemed to make everyone else really happy too, especially when Rayburn and his wife also brought a large amount of fruits and vegetables, bean rolls, and homemade granola bars.

But before we got much of a chance to start chowing down (even though we had all just theoretically eaten dinner), director Barbara Ridenour called us into the North Attic. Frances Harris and Jonathan Sivier were waiting to help us perfect our English country dancing.

We danced FOREVER.

OK, the dances aren't bad at all really. They're a lot better than they could have been. It just gets a little tiring, I guess, to do the Rufty Tufty (or was it the summer's day one? I think I just really like the name Rufty Tufty) four times in a row. Anyway, the dances are looking pretty awesome. I was unsure about them when we first learned them, but now I think they're going to look really cool, especially with our ridiculous masks.

Dance practice out of the way, it was time to start the run-through of the show.

The show looked totally different than it ever has, because most people had their costumes. Since costume director Mary Stasheff continued to do fittings and hand out clothing items throughout the rehearsal, more and more costumes were added throughout, so by the end, we all totally looked like we were from the 17th century (except for me, because I have no costume yet, unfortunately).

A few lines were forgotten, a couple cues missed, but right now, it doesn't really matter. That's how it always is. By Thursday, or even possibly by tomorrow, this play will be so rawesome that you won't even know what hit you when you come to see it. Seriously.

I think the real challenge of this play is the lines, because as Michelle Gao said in her diary entry yesterday, if you forget one or someone misses a cue and you're forced to ad lib, you can't really make something up. I guess you could try putting together some random collection of Shakespearean words, like “O, I wonder what doth thee cuckold, where for art thou?” and pray no one notices that was definitely not what you were supposed to say.

Maybe we'll have to come up with some discreet signal to everyone else that a line has been forgotten, like, when I completely forget the line “Call up the right master constable! We have here the most dangerous piece of lechery that ever was known in the commonwealth!” I could just poke sophomore Brittany Scheid with my unnecessarily sharp and menacing-looking watchman's pike. It won't be so easy, though, for everyone else, who don't have pikes and have many more lines than I do.

Anyway, I think that despite all of the lines that aren't known and all of the kinks that haven't been worked out yet, this is going to be a good show. On Sunday we had one of the best first tech rehearsals I've ever experienced, and last night was pretty awesome and went better than expected.

The violins sound incredible, as do the recorders. The dances look really good, as do the costumes, and even those dreaded stage kisses look totally real. Overall, I think everyone's in for some fantastic performances, as soon as we can conquer the massive tongue twister (or hurricane) that is a Shakespearean script.

P.S. Try really hard to sit by English teacher Steve Rayburn or some other Shakespeare aficionado, so that you're guaranteed to catch all of the best, but somewhat hidden, lines, most specifically the completely inappropriate ones.

CAST & CREW: “MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING”

• Don Pedro, Prince of Aragon: Carl Zielinski
• Don John, his bastard brother: Daniel McNamara
• Claudio, a young lord of Florence: Julian Hartman
• Benedick, a young lord of Padua: Grant Loos
• Leonata, governor of Messina: Michelle Gao
• Antonio, her brother: Rob Diehl
• Balthasar, attendant on Don Pedro: Zack Goldberg
• Conrade, follower of Don John: Dillon Price
• Borachio, follower of Don John: James Smith
• Friar Frances: Tianna Pittenger
• Dogberry, a constable: Deren Kudeki
• Verges, a headborough: Daniel Wilson
• Sexton: Anna Gooler
• Hero, daughter to Leonata: Jamie Weiser
• Beatrice, niece to Leonata: Hannah Lake-Rayburn
• Margaret, gentlewoman attending on Hero: Anna Cangellaris
• Ursula, gentlewoman attending on Hero: Sarah Lake-Rayburn
• Messenger: Jeremy Kemball
• Watch: Hannah Leskosky, Lauren Piester, Brittany Scheid
• Ensemble (watch, attendants, musicians, singers, etc.): Will Erickson, Katherine Floess, Maria Gao, Maia Gersten, Hadley Hauser, Rodney LeNoir, Marie Lilly, Diana Liu, Sierra Marcum, Aramael Pena-Alcantara, Elizabeth Russell, Serena Schatz, Ethan Schiller, Lisa Sproat, Richard Wang
• Musicians: Claire Johnson, Alan Liang (violin); Katherine Floess, Serena Schatz (recorder); Teddy Zamora-Mills (guitar); Zack Goldberg (voice)
• Costume design: Mary Stasheff
• Lighting design: Natsuki Nakamura, James Smith
• Lightboard operator: Natsuki Nakamura
• Set design: Aliisa Rantanen, Lor Sligar
• Stage managers: Lor Sligar, Tianna Pittenger
• Set crew: Entire cast and Stefanie Senior, Lor Sligar, Aliisa Rantanen
• Stage crew: Stefanie Senior, Stephanie Overmier, Karen Han, Lor Sligar
• Choreography: Jonathan Sivier
• Music consultants: Frances Harris, Rick Murphy
• Dance captains: Anna Cangellaris, Zack Goldberg